


Ten feet off the ground

by cielecarlate



Category: Social Network (2010)
Genre: M/M, Wrote this a while ago on me blog
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-31
Updated: 2012-12-31
Packaged: 2017-11-23 04:16:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/617979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cielecarlate/pseuds/cielecarlate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Eduardo actually punches Sean</p>
<p>Takes place right after Eduardo has said he's coming back...for EVERYTHING.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ten feet off the ground

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from OneRepublic's "Apologize"

He couldn’t take it anymore. “I’m going.”

“Hang on.”

Eduardo paused, hung on. Maybe the bastard had changed his mind after all.

Sean Parker handed him a check for nineteen thousand dollars. Eduardo didn’t really hear what he was saying, but he knew what this was. _Fuck you Sean, fuck you and your marlins and your trouts and your, and your Mark—_

One moment was all it took for the years of politeness and repression that started at the dining room table in Brazil to be forgotten. One split-second decision, and Eduardo Saverin realized that he _really fucking wants to knock the shit out of Sean Parker._

Sean flinched when he cocked his fist back, but then started laughing, because apparently Eduardo Saverin would never hurt a fly. And it’s true, he wouldn’t. He didn’t torture the chicken.

Sean Parker though…well, Eduardo was willing to make an exception.

There was a satisfying crunch as his fist connected with Sean’s nose and blood spurted onto both of them and Sean’s “What the fuck, Saverin?” was accompanied by an elbow to Eduardo’s ribs and Eduardo was shouting, shouting something, he didn’t even know what, he just knew that he was furious and devastated and desperate and this was all Sean Parker’s fault.

 

Mark watched, horrified, at his desk, his laptop in ruins by his feet. Eduardo had punched Sean. _Wardo had punched Sean_. Mark wasn’t the most observant person when it wasn’t code-related, but he was pretty sure that Eduardo had never even killed a spider. And now he was shouting in Sean’s bloodied face and waving his arms about like a madman. This was all a bit too much to take in on only two hours of sleep.

Dustin had sidled up to his desk while he gaped at the scene. “Isn’t this romantic, Mark?” he asked, chewing on a Slim Jim. “You have two guys fighting over you! Staking their claim!” He sighed dramatically.

“Shut up Dustin.” He had to stop this somehow. Wardo—there was obviously something wrong with Wardo, and Mark needed to stop him before he killed Sean. He got up and walked up behind Eduardo and put a tentative hand on his shoulder. “Wardo—”

Eduardo spun around, knocking Mark’s hand away and sending him stumbling back a few steps. Mark could see his face now, and it scared him. There was not a trace of remorse or apology in Eduardo’s eyes, not a hint of regret for what he had done (granted, he hadn’t really done much, but comparing this to his normal behaviour…), and Mark understood that this was a side of Wardo that he had never seen before, a side that probably even Wardo himself hadn’t know that he had.

All Mark could see was anger (and…hurt, maybe? He’d never been good at dealing with emotions. That was his favourite thing about code.) Shit. "Wardo, we need t—”

“Don’t call me Wardo.” His voice lashed out like a whip, low and hoarse. ”Don’t fu—”

“We need to talk. Now.” Mark kept his eyes locked on Eduardo’s. _I’m worried about you_. The thought surprised him. He was though, now that he thought about it. He was worried about Wardo. Because outside of everything that had happened with Facebook, Mark was Wardo’s friend, and friends were supposed to worry about each other-- that much he had learned.

Eduardo had been silent for so long now that Mark thought maybe he was going to throw a few punches at him too. Mark wouldn’t have minded. He supposed he deserved them.

 

His anger was leaving him as quickly as it had come on, and he didn’t want to be left completely stripped in front of the entire Facebook staff, so he nodded and followed Mark to a nearby office. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Dustin ready to leap up and join them and Chris frowning, but Mark shook his head and Dustin sat back down, looking like a petulant schoolboy.

If his world hadn’t been turned upside-down today, Eduardo would have laughed. As it was, he didn’t say a word until Mark had locked the door and shut the blinds. Eduardo felt the last of his mad adrenaline slip out of his body and suddenly he didn’t even have the energy to stand, let alone spar with someone. He dropped into a chair and put his head in his hands before he remembered that he wasn’t alone. He looked up. Mark was staring at him with a strange expression on his face.

“What do you want?” He tried to sound acerbic, but that was Mark’s forte, not his. Besides, his voice was nearly dead from his tirade.

“Are…” Mark seemed to be struggling with his words. ”Are you…okay?”

Eduardo actually laughed this time. ”Am I okay? Are you fucking kidding me, Mark? I just found out that my best friend had me cut out of the company that we founded together and made a complete fool of me in front of everyone. I guess you might not have noticed when I smashed your laptop, called you a pretentious douchebag, and punched Sean out there. But hey, I should be used to this, right?” He smiled bitterly. God, he just wanted to get out of here. Not to Harvard. He would be a laughingstock there. Miami maybe…but no, his father was even worse. Eduardo was suddenly struck with the realization that he had absolutely nowhere to go, no one to turn to.

“I—I saw—heard—all of it,” Mark was saying. Both of them were silent. ”It’s just. It doesn’t seem very…Wardo.”

“I thought I told you not to call me that,” he said automatically. Didn’t Mark understand that every time he used that silly nickname he’d conjured up one late night in the Kirkland dorm when the four of them—Mark, himself, Dustin, and Chris—were lying on the floor, high as kites, it felt like a knife twisting itself into Eduardo’s heart?

_“Thanks Wardo.”_

_“Wardo, could you grab me a beer?”_

_“Hey Wardo, your mom called. Why’d you give her my number?”_

_“Wardo. We did it.”_

_“Wardo.”_ God, it was like a fucking bee, or a, a car alarm that just wouldn’t turn off. _"Wardo. Wardo. Wardo.”_ Eduardo clamped his hands over his ears, willing the voice to stop. But the Mark in his head just went on and on, and all the times that he’d had that infuriating smirk on his face when he said it, because, goddammit, Wardo was a term of endearment; just as Dustin would say ‘baby’, Mark would say ‘Wardo’, but he never knew, _Mark never fucking knew—_

Mark was shaking him roughly. "Wardo, Wardo, stop it, Wardo, listen to me, what is going on with you—”

“What is going on with me?” Eduardo’s voice broke, and Mark was taken aback by the loathing and pain. Eduardo was shaking his head in what Mark could only take to be disbelief. And possibly disgust. "You have no fucking idea, do you? I gave you _everything_. You needed the algorithm? Kirkland window. You needed money? Eduardo Saverin Foundation. You needed me to come and sign my shares away? I did that too! And now I have nothing. Do you know what it feels like to have nothing, Mark?”

“You still have point-zero-three percent,” Mark spat out before he could stop himself. _You still have me_ , he wanted to say. (Mark is still Eduardo’s friend, even if the CEO of Facebook fired his CFO.)

“Yeah, about that.” Eduardo stood up now, apparently reinvigorated. He leaned forward, his face on a level with Mark’s. "What kind of sick joke is that? From thirty to less than one. Do you have any idea how _humiliating_ that is?”

Mark was rather confused now. ”I thought you’d be glad that you weren’t cut out entirely,” he said stiffly.

“That point-zero-three percent means that I have to come to shareholder meetings and see you and Sean Parker and everyone else who fucked me over,” Eduardo whispered. “So no, Mark. That does not make me glad.” His breath smelled like mint with an undercurrent of coffee, so familiar that it made Mark’s own breath catch.

“You never want to see me again?” Out of all the accusations and insults, this somehow hurt the most.

“Why would I?”

“Because…”  


_I need you._

_You’re my best friend._

_I want to see you again. Every day even. Just like before this whole mess started._  


“Because I love you.” Shit. _Where had that come from?_

“Excuse me?” Still polite as ever.

Mark refused to meet his eyes.

“Mark.”

“Don’t leave,” he whispered, still looking down. ”I-I want you here Wardo, I need you, you’re my best friend and I—” He licked his lips nervously. ”I can’t do this without you, I couldn’t have done any of this without you, and I’m sorry I cut you out, it was Sean’s idea, I didn’t realize…but I shouldn’t have gone along with it, and I know you hate me and you never want to see me again, but—”

“But you love me.”

“Yes.”

Eduardo smiled faintly. A few hours ago he would have probably cried. Finally. Now he gripped Mark’s shoulders and made him meet his eyes. "I love you too,” he said gently, and the widening of those familiar blue eyes almost undid him. He swallowed hard.

“But you’re a fucking dick and you betrayed your best fucking friend. Live with that.”

  
Mark walked abruptly out of the room and straight to the lawyers’ offices, not sparing a glance at the Facebook staff who were watching him expectantly, wondering just what the hell had happened in that room.

He told the lawyers to reduce Eduardo Saverin’s shares down to zero.  
Eduardo signed the papers, was escorted out of Facebook, caught a taxi back to his hotel and got in the elevator just as the door chimed.

It wasn’t until he was back in his hotel room, shoes flung off, suit in a crumpled heap on the unmade bed, that he let himself cry.

**Author's Note:**

> If you thought it was going to have a happy ending...well....SORRY, MY PRADA WAS AT THE CLEANER'S OKAY
> 
> Wardo's line: "You’re a fucking dick and you betrayed your best fucking friend. Live with that" is something that Andrew Garfield hissed into Jesse Eisenberg's ear before a take (at Fincher's instruction)


End file.
